Subject: Re: [HAB:] Commissive vs. perlocutionary speech
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 15:40:13 +0300 (EET DST)



Matt,

De-lurking for a while, I can't help pointing out a potentially
confusing category mistake here. There is no such category as
"perlocutionary speech acts" in speech act theory, certainly not in the
same sense as there are commissives. Austin's idea was that one and the
same speech act can bear several true descriptions, some relating to it
qua an utterance of sounds that have a conventional meaning (locution),
some qua a context-dependent conventional action (illocution) and some
qua an action that causes (potentially non-conventional) effects. The
act of saying "The door is open" (locution) *is* (in context) the act of
telling someone to leave (illocution) which *is* (in context) the act of making
someone angry (perlocution). It might be less misleading to speak of
locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary *aspects* of acts
rather than locutionary etc. acts. 

So, you see the potential confusion here: all speech acts have
perlocutionary effects (as long as a hearer reacts to them somehow), whereas
commissives are a class of illocutionary acts. Nor can there be
communicative action without perlocutions: I can convince you that the
Bush Administration is corrupt (perlocutionary effect/act) by arguing that
energy companies have an undue influence in its policy decisions
(illocutionary act), and so on. Habermas confused things in TCA, but he
has improved in some of his more recent work, such as 'Rationalitaet der
Verstaendingung. Sprechakttheoretische Erlaeuterungen zum Begriff der
kommunikativen Rationalitaet' in _Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung_. (I don't
remember the title of the English translation.) He there distinguishes
three classes of perlocutionary effects, as you probably know.
Unfortunately, he still goes on to speak of "perlocutions" as a separate
class of speech acts whose perlocutionary success (desired effect on the
hearer) is overtly independent of illocutionary success (acceptance of
validity claim by the hearer). I don't deny that there are such speech
acts, of course; it is simply unfortunate that he retains the term
"perlocutions" for them, because it makes it look like he has
misunderstood the basics of speech act theory - as indeed Searle has
accused him of doing. Threats and name-calling, for example, have their
locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects just like other
speech acts; the fact that the relationship between these aspects
differs here is neither here nor there.

> trying to connect was a symmetry between
> 
> 1. non-perlocutionary speech acts = yes/no = communicative action = 
> enligtenment/modernity
> 
> 2. perlocutionary speech acts = totalizing mythical world views (cannot take 
> yes/no position) = pre-enlightenment and/or reversion to mythology 
> (scientism)
> 
> Of course the class of perlocutions this applies to are disguised 
> strategically-oriented speech acts (deception, covert manipulation)) which I 
> am suggesting form the basis of mythical world views (creation fables, 
> redemption/salvation fables).

Having said all that, I think there is something to this idea. After
all, the speech acts Habermas somewhat misleadingly calls "perlocutions"
do not, according to him, raise validity claims, so that a fortiori
their effect on the hearer cannot be mediated through her acceptance of
the raised validity claims. Perhaps you cannot weigh reasons for or
against accepting a creation fable - that is why its acceptance cannot
be rational and takes a leap of faith instead.

Antti


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